While its encouraging to hear NBC backed away from its complaint, it remains disturbing that Twitter revoked the account in the first place and refuses to take responsibility for the egregious mistake. The company has continually refused to comment on its actions.

Let’s be perfectly clear: Twitter suspended a user for committing an act of journalism.

The mind boggling move undermines the San Francisco startup’s credibility as a supposed advocate of open communications, and whittles away the goodwill of professional and citizen journalists who are the lifeblood of the service.

In a series of tweets in recent days, Adams colorfully assailed, among other things, NBC’s ridiculous decision to force West Coast viewers to watch the Olympics on a time delay, presumably so the network could charge prime time advertising rates.

It’s been an infuriating experience for fans who can’t duck the spoilers blasting at them from all quarters of the Internet. Adams simply supplied them an appropriate outlet for those frustrations in the tweet that supposedly got his account deactivated.

Twitter told Adams he violated their terms of service by posting private information, specifically NBC Olympics President Zenkel’s e-mail address. But that flimsy explanation falls down under the lightest scrutiny.

Sure, social security numbers are private, credit card numbers are private. But the corporate e-mail address of a prominent executive of a major company is not private, especially when it can be readily found online — Twitter’s own published test for private information.

As others have pointed out, if Adams deserved to have his account suspended for this, what about Spike Lee?

The movie director errantly tweeted out what he thought was the home address of George Zimmerman, the man who accused of shooting and killing Trayvon Martin earlier this year. Instead it was the home of an elderly couple who ended up having to flee to a hotel in fear for their lives.

San Francisco Twitter member Laura Gluhanich asked an even more pointed question on Monday: “I wonder why Twitter never deleted the account that posted my home address and threatened to dismember me.”

Adam’s tweet didn’t amount to harassment or anything like publication of private facts. It amounted to a public service, one The Chronicle serves every week in publishing Chron Watch. The series highlights issues of community concern — most recently the human excrement clogging up BART escalators — and provides readers contact information for the person responsible for addressing it.

It makes people like BART’s chief of police — or in Adam’s case Zenkel — accountable to those directly affected by their decisions, actions or inactions. If Zenkel’s e-mail is bombed by disappointed NBC customers, maybe that should tell him something — and if his fragile ego can’t take that sort of criticism, maybe that should tell his board something.

Twitter isn’t just turning its back on journalists; it’s turning its back on itself. One of the most powerful attributes of social networking is that it hands megaphones to ordinary people, making it increasingly difficult for companies or politicians to ignore valid complaints that go viral.

But here’s what really worrisome about Twitter’s decision. The company, which is only beginning to gain real advertising traction, is a commercial partner with NBC on the Olympics, trading promoted tweets for on air promotion.

It’s good that NBC and Twitter finally no backed down in the wake of massive online criticism, notably across Twitter itself. But the fact they made this decision in the first place raises a troubling question about how readily the company will trade its previously firm stance on free speech for commercial interests.

You might say this is a trivial matter. It’s just an argument over a time delay, not an uprising in the Arab world. But that’s the very point: If Twitter relents to an advertising partner on a small matter, how can we trust them on the big ones?

Making the matter worse is that NBC says it was Twitter that first informed them of the “offending” tweet, according to The Telegraph. And making the matter absolutely maddening is that Twitter had reportedly asked Adams to apologize to Zenkel in order to have his account restored.

Sorry, but no, Twitter, you don’t get to pressure a journalist into apologizing for doing his job. And where you would find the nerve to do so is beyond me.

Whether intentionally or not, Twitter is now intricately tied into the practice of digital journalism; it’s the news feed of the modern age.

It benefits enormously from that position, receiving vast amounts of content and commentary that has built its massive user base. The entirely appropriate trade off is that the company should be expected to uphold the free speech values that are core to the trade.

So don’t get it twisted Twitter, it’s you that still owes Guy Adams the sincerest of apologies.